Spare 11 Gallon

[Kymie]

Hi everyone! I'm generally a die hard goldfish fan (I have a 59 gallon with 4 currently) but am keen to try out tropicals. At the moment I have a cycled, well established 11 us gallon housing a juvenile black moor goldfish, I am hoping to move Squirt (moor) to the 59 gall in the next week so I will then have a spare cycled tank.

I am quite taken with corys and adfs but wanted some advice on what you would recommend and how many for a small tank like this? I was also wondering about filters - the 11 gall currently has a Fluval u2 internal giving 10x filtration, is this too strong for tropicals? It does have a trickle setting so the current isn't as strong.

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the tropicals area Kymie.
I find that cories are delightful little fish and do well in somewhat cooler water than many tropicals like. Most, perhaps all, cories would do fine in the 59 with the goldfish as long as the tank stays near room temperature and is not allowed to get as cool as goldfish sometimes are. The 59 would make a nice home or 5 or 6 of them if they were in my home.
I have never kept ADFs so I am not sure what kind of water they are best in. Some other nice small fish include rasboras and endlers. With a small tank like that you would probably want to stick with males only in the livebearers. As a cold water person, I would bet you are accustomed to working without a heater. If you like the long thin look of many tropicals, you might want to consider some of the smaller goodeids. Goodeids are semi-tropicals from higher elevations in Mexico so they can tolerate somewhat lower temperatures than many tropicals but again cannot go nearly as cold as goldfish often do. They are almost alway kept in unheated tanks. I have a few different ones that are doing fine in 10 gallon species only tanks although many of the larger ones really need more space so I keep them in a 29, a 55, a 45 and a 4 long. The ones that spent the summer in a 150 gallon outdoor tub will be coming in for the winter to a 60 gallon that needs to get fixed this coming weekend.